Mispronunciations

[Pete Letkeman]

In Ontario Canada we have the 400 series highways as noted here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/400-series_highways
I'm not too sure why the numbering started at 400, but it did.

Most people, including police, politicians and news casters, call the name of the roadways as four oh one, four oh two, four oh three, etc.
However the roadways that they are speaking about are 401, 402, 403, etc.
Yet they call highway 400 "highway four hundred" and I'm not to sure what they call the highways which are named 410 or greater.

It seems kind of strange to me that this mispronunciation of the roadways has been generally accepted by most people.

Do you have know of other commonly accepted mispronunciations? (Please refrain from using Donald Trump phrases.)

[fred rosenberger]

there is a raging debate about whether the State I live in (Missouri) has a last syllable pronounced like "ee", or "uh".  Generally speaking, the more urban areas are "ee", and the more rural are "uh".  

There is a city near me spelled "Des Peres", but we pronouce it like "duh pear".  

"Gravois" road is pronounced "Gra-voy" (with the 'a' sound like "hat") .

"Spoede" road is called "spadey"

and "Creve Coeur" is pronounced to rhyme with "leave more".  

[Bear Bibeault]

OK, in central TX:

Burnet == Burn-it

Manor == may-nor

Mueller == Mill-er

Koenig == kay-nig

Manchaca == Man-shak

[Piet Souris]

And do the native English-speakers still say 'fish' to 'ghoti'?    

[Pete Letkeman]

Piet Souris wrote:And do the native English-speakers still say 'fish' to 'ghoti'?

I do not think that I've seen that word before Piet. But a quick Google bought up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti which has a link to
(Warning, contains a few swear words) http://www.zompist.com/spell.html which is titled "Hou tu pranownse Inglish".

Interesting all the rules that the many people plainly accept even if they don't seem to make that much sense.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Piet Souris wrote:And do the native English-speakers still say 'fish' to 'ghoti'?    

They might if they ever saw the word “ghoti” other than in puzzles.

If you think English placenames are confusing,

There are two places called Cambridge, pronounced differently.

I know two different pronunciations of Loughton.

Ditto Norwood.

And Happisburgh has to contract its pronunciation to the size of the village. As more of it disappears into the North Sea, maybe it will be shortened more to “Hay”.

Woughton(-on-the-Green) has appeared previously in my posts on this forum.

But Celtic placenames, starting with Betws‑y‑Coed, are even worse.

[Paul Clapham]

We had the 401 here in Vancouver a long time ago (between 1964 and 1973 according to British Columbia Highway 1) and there are still traces of that name, including e.g. the 401 Motel. As far as I can recall it was universally called "the 401".

As far as Ontario Highway 410, the Wikipedia article says it's "also known as Highway 410 and colloquially as the four-ten".

[Jan de Boer]

I speak Spanish. One thing I did wrong being in California, is pronouncing the city names according to their Spanish original pronunciation.. I do not know how to write it down, but in Spanish, San Jose is not Sen Hoh-say. Than you try to ask an American where the bus from San Francisco to San Jose is.

Luckily I met a Mexican immigrant who could help me! ;)

[Dave Tolls]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:But Celtic placenames, starting with Betws‑y‑Coed, are even worse.

That's an easy one, so long as you remember the 'w' is a sort of short 'oo' sound.
So somewhere between Bet-oos and Bet-us.

At least it scans based on its pronunciation rules.
Leominster makes less sense.

[Liutauras Vilda]

I sometimes see Canadians mispronounce "than", so they say "then" in about 9 out of 10 cases. But I'm not sure how common is that

[Campbell Ritchie]

If you remember the rules: miss out half the vowels and half the syllables, then Leominster does make sense. They have different rules in Gaelic‑speaking areas (Scotland and Ireland): miss out 90% of the letters. Leominster was called after somebody called Leo, but I have forgotten everything else.

[Pete Letkeman]

I'm sure that many of us are aware of James Bond 007.
But is that:

James Bond Double Oh Seven

James Bond Double Zero Seven

James Bond Zero Zero Seven

James Bond Oh Oh Seven

James Bond Oh Zero Seven

James Bond Zero Oh Seven

I'm pretty sure in the movies which have come out during the last ten years or so that within those movie they say Double Oh Seven at least once.

[Liutauras Vilda]

Oh, you missed one Pete: nil nil seven

[Pete Letkeman]

Liutauras Vilda wrote:Oh, you missed one Pete

Yes thanks Liutauras . I do miss things, more often then I'd like to admit.

Just minutes ago I came across this "futbol", but in North America many people would spell it like "football".
Add to that, many North Americas use the word "soccer" when the most of the rest of the world uses futbol or football.

[Piet Souris]

Isn't futbol Brazilian? It is not the same as North American football, and I have no idea why they call it football.

[Dave Tolls]

Pete Letkeman wrote:I'm sure that many of us are aware of James Bond 007.
But is that:

James Bond Double Oh Seven

It's this one, unless you're Desmond Dekker, in which it's this one:

Pete Letkeman wrote:

James Bond Oh Oh Seven

Which I now have stuck in my head.

[Knute Snortum]

In the Portland, Oregon area there are a few gotchas:

There is a river called the Willamette which newcomers usually pronounce WILL-uh-met, but should be will-LAM-et.

And there is a street in downtown Portland named Couch, which most English speakers would pronounce COWCH, but is supposed to be COOCH.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Liutauras Vilda wrote:Oh, you missed one Pete: nil nil seven

Tennis players would of course say love-love-seven.

[Liutauras Vilda]

Piet Souris wrote:Isn't futbol Brazilian?

I always thought what's about "soccer" then? Where this bit coming from? Pete already explained.

I hope I didn't introduce mispronunciation on Pete Piet Pete Piet. I quite often have to think for a second what I'm referring to.

[Liutauras Vilda]

English guys must to know.., when I on-boarded train once and asked lady if the train goes through Leichester square stop (orig. written as Leicester square), she didn't understand me.

Later I figure out it is pronounced Lester. That's weird, why they write that bit then "eich", could be removed as does nothing.

[Tim Holloway]

Leicester is just a typical English name erosion. The really fun ones are things like Bicester (bister) and, of course, the world-renowned and child-frustrating Worchestershire. English place names are not infrequently pile-ups of successive waves of immigrants/invaders, so the actual "chester" meant something like "village", and you have fun things like counties, shires, hundreds and other land divisions of greater or lesser degree depending on who has lived there.

In the USA, spelling tends to be a bit more phonetic, and we're more likely to at least pretend to the original pronunciations of foreign words like Nicaragua and jaguar. But the little Georgia town of Cairo is pronounced "kay-ro".

And for the record, Florida has a State Road 400 (pronounced Four Hundred), and SR 434 (pronounced Four Thirty-Four). There is actually logic in our number schemes, though. State Roads number from the Northeast corner of the state to the Southwest (and this in a state which is angled in precisely the opposite direction ). Even-numbered roads run mostly East-West, Odd-numbered roads run mostly North-South. Then there's the funny stuff. State Road 9 is the local designation for Interstate 95, State Road 400 is Interstate 4 (a/k/a the Mickey Mouse Highway/World's Longest Parking Lot for Orlando commuters). I-4 is one of the rare roads that runs diagonally for most of its length. State Road 40 is south of most of the 300s and its intersection with State Road 9/I-95 is about 10 miles North of SR 400/I-4, and State Road 50 is the main East-West road in Orlando. And so on. There's madness, but a method to it.

Overall, though, English does tend to favor the easier "four-oh-four" to the more formal "four hundred four", just as "six of the clock" is 6 o'clock. And so forth.

[Dave Tolls]

Tim Holloway wrote:Leicester is just a typical English name erosion. The really fun ones are things like Bicester (bister) and, of course, the world-renowned and child-frustrating Worchestershire. English place names are not infrequently pile-ups of successive waves of immigrants/invaders, so the actual "chester" meant something like "village", and you have fun things like counties, shires, hundreds and other land divisions of greater or lesser degree depending on who has lived there.

-chester (and Chester itself) comes from Latin for a camp/fort (caestor or something, ah Google castra).
And it's Worcestershire.  They couldn't be bother to keep the 'h'...

[Tim Holloway]

Dave Tolls wrote:

Tim Holloway wrote:Leicester is just a typical English name erosion. The really fun ones are things like Bicester (bister) and, of course, the world-renowned and child-frustrating Worchestershire. English place names are not infrequently pile-ups of successive waves of immigrants/invaders, so the actual "chester" meant something like "village", and you have fun things like counties, shires, hundreds and other land divisions of greater or lesser degree depending on who has lived there.

-chester (and Chester itself) comes from Latin for a camp/fort (caestor or something, ah Google castra).
And it's Worcestershire.  They couldn't be bother to keep the 'h'...

Ah, thanks. Google didn't volunteer fast enough so I tried to rely on memory. Always a dangerous approach.

And that reminds me, I'm all out of W. sauce. I likes it in shepherd's pie. What I makes with cow. And Caesar salad. Which is not only not Roman, it's named after a chef in Tijuana.

[Peter Rooke]

The military has all of these; plenty of examples.  British army has names like 103, which would be one-o-three not the hundred and third, 21 would be two-one and not twenty one.
Odd, but when I recall my old number - the first zero is said as oh and the second zero as just zero.  Not sure why, but you tend not to question stuff too much.  

I'm also, happy and proud that I can mispronounce almost every English word  its my right as a native of Newcastle  
   

[Pete Letkeman]

I'm pretty sure we've all happened upon a 404 page not found web error. Some of us may even have experienced HTTP responses ranging from 100 to 500.
Most of us here are at least some what computer savvy, therefore we know that four oh four is not the same as four hundred and four.
Yet, I suspect many of us do say four oh four when we mean four hundred and four.

Unlike some people on this site, I do not know other non computer programming languages, only English.
I wonder what is common place for non English speaking people when then get a 404 page not found error?

[Tim Holloway]

Pete Letkeman wrote:I'm pretty sure we've all happened upon a 404 page not found web error. Some of us may even have experienced HTTP responses ranging from 100 to 500.
Most of us here are at least some what computer savvy, therefore we know that four oh four is not the same as four hundred and four.
Yet, I suspect many of us do say four oh four when we mean four hundred and four.

Unlike some people on this site, I do not know other non computer programming languages, only English.
I wonder what is common place for non English speaking people when then get a 404 page not found error?

Ah, but here's the rub. "404" isn't the 404th response code in the RFC. Instead response codes are broken into banks. Bank 4 is the Client Error bank, and so 404 is the 4th code of the 4th bank.

To make it easier to code automated client logic, this value is sent as a composite number - "404" as opposed to "4-04" or something like that, but this is one case where "four hundred and four" isn't actually the proper reading.

[Campbell Ritchie]

No, it is four‑oh‑four.

[Liutauras Vilda]

Peter Rooke wrote:The military has all of these; plenty of examples.  British army... 21 would be two-one and not twenty one.

I thougt in army these usually called blackjack or something

[Randy Maddocks]

Ah, highway 401 (I pronounce it four-oh-one)....one of Canada's busiest, as well as most dangerous highways. I know this is not a strictly Canadian issue, but there are so many drivers out there who do not seem to grasp the concept that your braking distance decreases significantly on wet/icy pavement versus dry pavement. I have seen so many video clips online (mostly from cameras mounted on various overpasses on the 401) of cars and trucks plowing into other vehicles stopped, or slowed down, on the highway, because of constructions, bad weather, etc...It appears to be especially bad for transport trucks plowing into vehicles (to the point where police officers are riding in transport trucks to try and clamp down on distracted drivers: distracted

I have seen, and heard about, the wreckage from some horrific accidents that are is bad that only through dental records are they able to identify the victims.

The Discovery channel has a show on now that chronicles the rescue and cleanup efforts emergency responders have to contend with on that highway: heavy_rescue

Sorry all, went off on a tangent here, don't mean to spark a different topic. Back to our regularly scheduled topic...    

[Pete Letkeman]

According to the show Heavy Rescue: 401, highway 401 is one of the busiest roads in North America, not just Canada.
Stay on this road and you can go from the 401 in Ontario to I-75 in Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_75.
Or use this road and take an exit onto 402 which is renamed when it I-94 in Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Michigan.

[Randy Maddocks]

Pete Letkeman wrote:highway 401 is one of the busiest roads in North America

I heard the same.

I think by virtue of being so close to the U.S., being in the most densely populated province (which isn't saying much - this is Canada, after all), and the highway being a major corridor from one end of the southern part of the province to the other, makes it so popular for travelling.

When it comes to speeding on that highway, the posted speed limit signs might as well read: As fast as your car can go, don't matter the weather

[Tim Holloway]

And when it becomes I-75, it runs through Detroit, Toledo, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, and terminates (thanks to the co-opting of Alligator Alley) in Miami. Not counting some significant secondary cities like Lexington, Chattanooga and Gainesville, FL. That's a lot of rush-hour traffic!

[Paul Clapham]

Liutauras Vilda wrote:Later I figure out it is pronounced Lester. That's weird, why they write that bit then "eich", could be removed as does nothing.

I just finished reading a book called "The Red Atlas: How the Soviets Secretly Mapped the World", and it's quite interesting how their cartographers and/or spies produced maps of Britain with local pronunciations like "Lester" (in Cyrillic characters of course). I was baffled by a place whose name transliterated into "Magit" and I had to go to another map to find out it was really "Margate".

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

"houston"

In Texas, it is :"hue - ston". In NYC the street name is "house - ton".

[Dave Tolls]

Randy Maddocks wrote:I know this is not a strictly Canadian issue, but there are so many drivers out there who do not seem to grasp the concept that your braking distance decreases significantly on wet/icy pavement versus dry pavement.  

I think you mean increases...though (as you say) the way some people drive you would think it did decrease.

[Liutauras Vilda]

Paul Clapham wrote:I just finished reading a book called "The Red Atlas: How the Soviets Secretly Mapped the World", and it's quite interesting how their cartographers and/or spies produced maps of Britain with local pronunciations like "Lester" (in Cyrillic characters of course). I was baffled by a place whose name transliterated into "Magit" and I had to go to another map to find out it was really "Margate".

Then you also would be surprised how in Russia and some other Eastern Europe countries pronounce their names, for English speaking guys these supposed to look like complete mispronunciations.

i.e.
In passport you'd see written Alexander, while in real such person would be called Sasha (in Cyrillic: Саша). Only 1 common letter  'a' between those two words, and yet both words mean same name.

Also:
Maria - usually called Masha.
Vladimir - Vova.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Dave Tolls wrote:. . . -chester (and Chester itself) comes from Latin for a camp/fort . . .  castra). . . .

Castra gives rise to three common placename endings, -chester, -caster (both often pronounced as written) and -cester usually pronounced ster.
Except in Gloucestershire (glos′ter-sheer) where Cirencester is Siss′ester.

[Tim Cooke]

I have posted this before but this short summary of Irish accents is very entertaining. I live in the north.

[Randy Maddocks]

Randy Maddocks wrote:
I know this is not a strictly Canadian issue, but there are so many drivers out there who do not seem to grasp the concept that your braking distance decreases significantly on wet/icy pavement versus dry pavement.

Dave Tolls wrote:I think you mean increases...

I had to think about that for a minute, but yes, I meant increases.